Policies, textbooks, and curriculum constraints to integrating literature into language education: EFL teacher perspectives from Russia

Abstract

Employing a qualitative design, this exploratory study examined the challenges and constraints encountered by foreign language teachers in Russia when using literature in their lessons in primary, secondary and tertiary education. Consisting of interviews with nine Russian EFL teachers, the study's findings indicate that education policies, a strong focus on standardized testing, poor quality textbooks, and a lack of institutional support are not only hindering a wider adoption of literary texts as a language resource, but are also likely hampering language learning in students. The study presents policymakers, as well as school and university administrators, with insights into the structural issues that might be preventing foreign language teachers from more effectively integrating literature into their lessons, and offers recommendations that could help them to formulate policies and strategies that address these issues.

Comics as a multimodal resource and students’ willingness to communicate in Russian

“…This hesitancy can be compounded when the study materials they use contain language that does not reflect real-world interactions. Such is often the case with foreign language textbooks (Gilmore 2004), which have been found to contain outdated authentic content (Calafato and Gudim 2020) and are sometimes described by teachers as being of poor quality (Calafato 2018b). These shortcomings in textbooks have prompted calls for a greater focus on using authentic content in the foreign language classroom (Calafato and Paran 2019).…”